Instead of reviewing Hair I should simply report that
something downtown, dirty, ballsy, and outrageous has hit Broadway at last,
and it's a smash, and hopefully Broadway will never be the same.
Hair demonstrates that there's really no need to be cautious, polite, and
self-censoring, that you can get away with anything, that you actually
can do your own thing and win fame and fortune too. The Beatles have
been saying it for years now, and it's high time that liberating spirit
hit the theatre. Hair on Broadway is a good start.

The "thing" in question is not built into the show, but
specifically added by Tom O'Horgan, the new director. Hair was a
pushy, phony drag in it's original version at Joseph Papp's Public Theater.
The basic idea was good - a rock musical about hippies - but it was hoked
up and conventionally show-bizzed in the writing, acting, and staging to
the point of betraying everything it was trying to represent. O'Horgan
has not only recast and restaged the show almost totally, he has also virtually
eliminated the book. Instead of a patronizing portrait of hippies,
hair is now a direct freak-out. O'Horgan pulls every trick in the
book, old and new, and writes a second volume of tricks of his own.
Never has a show been so chock full of shock effects, so manic in pursuit
of novelty. Every mockable subject yields its moment of fun - flag,
church, home, color line. Half naked hippies roam the aisles waving
at friends and passing out incense and flowers. Boys and girls alike
strip naked and stand frontally exposed (though not brightly lit).
Where will it all end?

What remains of the original Hair - except for the songs
- is still a bring down, but there's more than enough of the new to make
it an over-all ball to see. O'Horgan has put together a joyous cast
who project fine-spirited physicality and togetherness. The principal
roles are unsympathetic and virtually unplayable, so that Gerome Ragni
and James Rado, who also wrote the words, are not shown to advantage.
The more sympathetic and memorable performances are those of Steve Curry,
Sally Eaton, Jonathan Kramer, Paul Jabara, Melba Moore, and Ronald Dyson.
The show periodically betrays some seriousness of intention, struggling
to say something about the draft, the generation gap, drug virtues, and
so on, which is generally unconvincing. Only at the end does it communicate
real possibilities, in a movingly simple Shakespearian duet ("What A Piece
Of Work Is Man...") and a stirring ensemble plea to "Let the sun shine
in..." It's importance is not anything it says about hippies, though,
but the plane fact that O'Horgan has blown up Broadway.

Copyright The Village Voice.

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